Set apart and Made Holy

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Transcript:

Glad to see all of you here this morning. We’re going to be in 1 Thessalonians chapter 5 this morning. 1 Thessalonians chapter 5.

And over the years as I’ve talked to people about salvation, as I’ve talked to people about the gospel, there are a couple of responses that I’ve heard, or there’s several responses that I’ve heard that have troubled me, but two of them in particular grow out of some confusion about what God expects from us. And I’ve heard, and you may have felt this way, you may feel this way this morning, but I’ve heard people tell me, well, I can’t trust Christ as my Savior. I can’t become a Christian.

I can’t, whatever terminology we use for what we’re talking about there with trusting in Christ for salvation, that they can’t do that because, well, I just have too much sin in my life. So let me, you know, maybe once I get myself cleaned up, then I can come to Christ. And that misses really the point of what Jesus came to do. If we could clean ourselves up enough to come to God, then the cross was totally unnecessary.

And another thing I hear is, well, I’m forgiven, aren’t I? I’m under grace, so I can just do what I want. Okay, that’s a big red flag right there.

Because, yes, the Bible does teach that we’re under grace. The Bible does teach that all things are lawful for me, but not all things are expedient. But the Bible teaches that as a believer, as somebody that God wants to change from the inside out, that my want to should be different.

And so there’s some confusion about the role that goodness and growing to be a better person, the role that this plays in salvation, which is, biblically, there’s no role that that plays in salvation, at least in getting salvation. This idea that I’ve got to clean myself up first. No, no, no. God does that for you. You can’t do it for yourself.

And we’ve covered that some in the last few weeks as we’ve been going through this series on basic Christian doctrines. When we’ve talked about the atonement, we’ve talked about the fact that there’s no amount of good that we can do to change the wrong that we’ve done. I was trying to explain the gospel to Benjamin yesterday.

He had a lot of questions while we were sitting there, just the two of us. And couldn’t get past this idea of being a good person. And the kids like to draw and paint and stuff.

And so I use the example, if I’m wearing white clothes and I spill paint all down the front of my shirt once, and then I get all the other paint exactly where it’s supposed to be and I paint a masterpiece, does all the good work that I’ve done on this canvas change the fact that I’ve still got this paint out of place? No. And all the good I can do, all the perfection I can try to muster any other place in my life doesn’t erase the fact that there’s still this taint of sin.

And so Jesus had to pay for that. The fact is we can’t be good enough to come to God. We can’t clean ourselves up enough to come to God.

If you’re thinking that this morning that, well, I might come to Jesus later on. I just need to get some things in order. You need to hear you can’t get things enough in order to come to God.

That’s the whole reason that Jesus came, was to die on the cross and pay for our sins, all the things that we couldn’t get in order. But at the same time, God’s plan for us does not end at salvation. What God has done to save us by His grace through Jesus Christ is a miraculous blessing that we could have never asked or deserved.

The fact that God would look at us and say, you’re a sinner who deserves hell, but I’m going to love you enough to send Jesus to pay for your sins, and I’m going to let you have a relationship with me and be in heaven with me anyway, is a blessing that we could never have asked for or deserved. And yet God provides it to us. But at the risk of sounding like one of the guys on the infomercials, I have to tell you, but wait, there’s more.

God’s plan for us doesn’t end at just saving us and taking us to heaven and now we get there by the skin of our teeth, hallelujah, it is that he saves us and then he transforms us. He changes us from the inside out to be what we couldn’t be in the first place and should have been. There’s a whole doctrine that is missed called sanctification.

We confuse it with salvation and say, I’ve got to clean myself up first. You can’t. It comes after. And then others who say, well, I’m saved now.

I can live however I want. No, if you’re saved, you shouldn’t want to live those ways anymore. It doesn’t mean that you’re as good as you should be the day after conversion.

None of us will ever be perfect on this side of eternity. But we can’t forget about the idea of sanctification that’s found all throughout the Bible. The Bible is rich with places.

The New Testament is rich with places where it talks about the idea of sanctification. We’re going to talk about what that means today. There are so many we could not cover them all this morning.

I want to give you just a crash course this morning from one spot about what the Bible is talking about with sanctification. Some of you may be sitting there saying, I don’t even know what that word means. Perfect.

That is a church word. That is a churchy word. I was raised in church, and it still took me decades to learn some of this terminology.

So I want to explain to you this morning from God’s word what sanctification is, what it means, and how it affects your life and your relationship to Jesus Christ. This idea that he will take us and change us and clean us up after conversion. And we’re going to look at one of the many passages this morning that talks about sanctification is in 1 Thessalonians chapter 5, where I asked you to turn earlier. And we’re going to start in verse 16.

Starting in verse 16, Paul gives the church at Thessalonica a short list of do’s. Here are some things to work on. And he says, Rejoice evermore, pray without ceasing, in everything give thanks, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you.

If you’ll remember, I talked to you about that right before Thanksgiving and said the Bible doesn’t tell us we have to give thanks for everything, but to give thanks in everything. So the Bible’s not telling us to just be so optimistic that, thank you, Lord, for this cancer. No, that’s not what the Bible’s saying.

But in the midst of those circumstances, we can still find things to thank God for. And when you start to realize that every heartbeat, every breath that we have is a gift from God that we haven’t earned, but that he bestows on us out of his goodness, it starts to change your perception of what you have to be thankful for. So he says, in everything give thanks, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus, concerning you.

What’s God’s will for my life? Thankfulness, among other things. Quench not the spirit.

Despise not prophesying. Prove all things. Hold fast to that which is good.

Abstain from all appearance of evil. So he goes through this list, and just to kind of give you an idea of what some of these are talking about without taking the time to go into them in depth this morning, he’s telling us to be joyful. In verse 16, rejoice evermore because we are joyful.

pray without ceasing that doesn’t mean that I can’t stop and have a conversation with you because I’m too busy praying but it means that I am a prayerful person he says be prayerful in other words when we can go three days and think oh wait I haven’t talked to God since Sunday that’s a problem we need to cultivate lives of prayerfulness where we’re in constant communication with the Father be thankful which we’ve already talked about be attentive to the Spirit don’t quench the Spirit when we do a fire pit in the backyard, first of all, it takes me all night to get it going, and by the time it does get going, we’re ready to go to bed. I can’t just leave the fire burning, so usually I have to get out the water hose and put the fire out. And that water quenches the fire.

Suddenly the fire is gone. He’s saying don’t do that to the Spirit. When the Spirit of God is burning in your life and trying to tell you something and trying to push you in a certain direction, don’t pour water on the Spirit.

Don’t ignore the Spirit and shut it down. In other words, be attentive to what the Spirit of God is leading us to do. Be teachable.

He says, despise not prophesying. Now they were talking, my understanding is he was talking about their ability to look at the Old Testament prophecies and see that Jesus was exactly who he claimed to be, that he was the one God promised. And he’s saying, don’t despise this instruction.

Be teachable. Prove all things. Meaning that word prove in 1600’s English meant to test. Test all things and hold fast to that which is good.

Be discerning. Don’t believe it just because somebody told you. And I tell you that all the time.

Not that I want you to be hardened skeptics, but I tell you that all the time. Go study this for yourself and make sure from God’s Word that what I’m telling you is true. Don’t believe everything just because some preacher tells you.

Because although I try and most preachers I know try very hard to make sure that what we’re saying is studied out and rightly divided, the word of truth, there are people out there who claim to be preachers who will lie to you for money or power or fame or television spots or whatever else. You have to be careful and you have to test what everybody says by the word of God. And the Apostle Paul, you know, the Bible says that the people at Berea in Acts chapter 17 were more noble than the people at Thessalonica because they took what Paul said and they tested it against the word of God to make sure Paul was telling them the truth.

So that doesn’t mean, I’m not telling you that when the preacher, whether it’s me or somebody else, when the preacher says good morning, you have to say what’s so morning about it. I’m not telling you to embrace that level of skepticism, but I am saying don’t blindly take what anybody says. The Bible says to test everything according to God’s word and hold fast to that which is good.

Abstain from all appearance of evil. So we’re to be discerning and we’re to be pure. He says to abstain from all appearance of evil.

Why didn’t do anything wrong? Yeah, but did it look like it? Did it look like it?

I’ve known some young couples over the years who were raised in church who have decided to live together before marriage. And the people I’ve known who’ve made this decision have been good people. But they’ve made that decision.

And as a friend, as I’ve had the opportunity to talk to them about it, I said, what are you doing here? Why would you make this decision? Because it doesn’t look right.

Well, we’re not doing anything. Okay, but understand what it looks like. And that’s just one example.

If you have people in your family who have made that decision, I’m not trying to pick on them or pick on you. That’s just the first example that comes to mind. I could go and pass out tracts in a bar and it’d be totally innocent.

But what does it look like if you see me as the pastor going into the saloon with Louise? I’m just teasing. I’ve never seen Louise go into the saloon.

What does that look like? There’s something about that that doesn’t look right. And I’m not saying live your life in mortal terror, and I don’t think the Bible is saying live your life in mortal terror of what anybody else is going to think of you.

But we have to be discerning and we have to live lives of purity as believers where we have to consider what does this do to my testimony, what I’m about to do, what I’m about to say, what does it do to my testimony? And he says, just embrace purity. Just abstain from the appearance of evil.

If it looks like it’s wrong, stay away. So he gives them these reminders. But these characteristics are not things to say, hey, do this and you’ll be a good Christian.

These are not things that we do in order to grow closer to God. These are some things that come as we are growing closer to God. These are not ways to get God to sanctify us or to speed the process along.

These are evidence. These are some of the evidences of the sanctifying work of God in our lives. That as God begins to change my heart from the inside out, as God begins to transform me to be more like Jesus Christ, I should be more joyful than I was ten years ago.

And I think in most ways I am. I should be more thankful than I was ten years ago.

and you know what I’ve still got room for improvement God will continue that work in me I should be more teachable than I was 10 years ago and I definitely am that because 10 years ago I thought I knew everything and then life knocks you around and you realize you don’t see these things are evidence of the sanctifying work of God in our lives he’s not saying do these things so so that that God will love you more he’s not saying do these things so God will save you and forgive you he’s saying that as people that God has saved and forgiving these are some of the things that you should be seeing going on in your life and it’s God who does the sanctifying work in our lives but we as believers have a responsibility to show evidence of that and he prayed, Paul goes on in the next few verses to pray for them for God to sanctify them.

And if you’re still sitting there saying, yeah, but you haven’t told us what that means, I’m getting there, I promise. In verse 23, he prays for them and he says, and the very God of peace sanctify you wholly. Now that’s not a, that’s not a command to God.

The way that sentence is structured, he’s actually wishing, hoping that God would do that. He’s in essence asking God to sanctify the people at Thessalonica entirely. And he says, and I pray God, your whole spirit and soul and body be He is praying for them that God would begin and complete this work in them of sanctifying them and preserving them whole and blameless, not just for a few weeks, not just for a couple of years, but until Jesus Christ returns.

He says in verse 24, faithful is he that calleth you who will also do it. So he prays for the believers to be sanctified and to be sanctified fully. And as believers, we’re not any different from the people at Thessalonica.

We are supposed to be sanctified. If you’re a believer in Jesus Christ this morning, God’s plan for you, God’s goal for your life, His will for your life, maybe better said, is your sanctification. Which raises the question, which we’re now coming to, what is sanctification?

And the first thing that it’s important to share with you is that sanctification really is a two-fold word. And to give you a better idea, I was thinking about it this morning with Charlie. He’ll be here in under two months, which things are starting to get real now.

Charlie will be born in less than two months. When he is born, when we get to hold him for the first time, and hopefully I will be the one who holds him for the first time just like with the others. We have a little contest going to see who gets to do it.

When I hold him for the first time, he will be every bit as much a person as he ever will be. and I submit to you that that actually starts much much earlier at the moment of conception but everybody just about agrees that once a baby is born they’re a person okay when I hold him he will be every bit as much a person as he’s ever going to be and yet we will spend the next 18 years of his life Lord willing teaching him and training him in the things that he needs to know to be a productive decent person I remind Benjamin and Madeline all the time, what is my job? I’ll ask them, what is my job?

And one of them will usually say to pastor the church. No, no, no, my first job. What is my first job?

To teach us the right things. Yes, so stop getting mad at me when I get on to you because my job is to teach you the things you need to know to grow up to be decent people even if it kills me. That is my job.

Not to make you happy, not to be your best friend. I hope that comes. But my job is to whip you into decent people.

So we will spend the next 18 years, even though Charlie is as much a person as he’s ever going to be, we will spend 18 years molding him as a person. And my understanding of sanctification from God’s word is that it works the same way. When we trust Christ, when we are born again, we are every bit as much a child of God as we are ever going to be.

There aren’t shades and degrees and grades here. You either are or are not. and so when we are born again when we trust Christ as our Savior we are every bit as much a child of God as we are ever going to be we are sanctified in that moment we are set apart unto God and we are every bit as much His as we are ever going to be and then He spends the rest of our lives training us and molding us to act like it and so sanctification takes place in an instant first of all sanctification if you’re following along in the notes in your bulletin, sanctification is instant as God sets us apart as his from the moment of conversion.

Now there’s another big churchy word called justification where God wipes the slate clean. When we trust Christ as our Savior, God forgives our sins and he doesn’t forget them. The Bible says he chooses to remember them no more.

It’s not like God suddenly gets amnesia. God says, I’m going to make the decision to not hold that against you anymore. And the slate is wiped clean.

That’s called justification. And at the same moment, sanctification takes place where God says, you’re mine. You’re mine.

At the moment, well, even before that, even before they were born, as soon as I knew that Benjamin and Madeline were there, as soon as I knew Charlie was there, they were mine. They were Burns’s. And to me, that meant something.

And they were every bit as much mine as they were ever going to be. And I love all of you, but those people in that back row are mine. And there’s a difference.

Any of you in this room who have had children, you may love anybody else in this room, but there’s something different. Those are mine. You look at your children, those are mine.

And God sets us apart and marks us out and says, they’re mine. You belong to me now. And I tell my kids from time to time, your barns act like it.

As I try to teach them how to act in ways that won’t embarrass us in public. And God says, you’re mine. Your status has changed.

You no longer belong to the world. You no longer belong to Satan. You no longer belong to yourself.

You’ve been bought with a price. You belong to me. And then he spends the rest of our lives teaching us how to act like it.

but he says faithful is he in verse 24 faithful is he that calleth you who also will do it there’s an element of this where God calls us out and marks us out as his we belong to him he stamped his name on us if it was anything like me God’s taken out his little label maker And he’s printed out his name and he’s stuck it right on us. So nobody mistakes that we are his. And sanctification is tied to the word sanctify and sanctity, which we know the word holiness.

Part of the word holiness means that God is set apart. He’s different. There’s the aspect of holiness where God is perfect.

First and foremost, it means God is separate and different. And for us to be sanctified means God has taken us and set us apart. We did belong in the world, and we were under the power of the prince of this world, as the Bible calls him, but God has taken us and set us apart now and says, you are mine.

That’s part of sanctification. And it takes place right then. You don’t come to Christ, and you’re not born again, and then somewhere down the road, 10 years or so, you’re finally spiritual enough where God says, yeah, I think I’ll claim you now.

No, at that moment of conversion, that moment when God calls us out, and we respond in faith, we are then set aside and marked as His. And because of that, Peter said in 2 Peter 2, you’re a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a peculiar people. I don’t know how many other ways he could say you’re different, you’re set apart, that you should show forth the praises of Him who has called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.

So God has called you out and set you aside and called you his for a purpose. And if you’re a believer this morning, if you’re someone who has trusted in Christ and asked God to forgive your sins, then God looks at you and says, you are mine. You belong to him.

And you’re every bit as much his now as you ever have been or will be. But there’s another aspect of sanctification. Like I said, not only is Charlie as much a person as he’s ever going to be, but then we spend the next 18 years, and hopefully he’ll listen to me beyond that, and we spend that time teaching him and training him to be the right kind of person.

Teaching him what that means. And that’s where we come into the fact that sanctification is ongoing, as God molds us every day to be more like Jesus. And that is God’s will for us is to be more like Jesus.

I don’t believe it’s in my notes this morning, but there’s a passage, I believe, in Romans chapter 8 that talks about this. And a lot of people are scared to look at it or talk about it because it mentions predestination, foreknowledge and all that. But what it says is those whom he did foreknow, he did also predestine to be conformed to the image of his son.

And some have taken that to mean that God chose some for salvation and some for help. With all due respect to them, and many of them are smarter than I will ever think about being, that’s not what I understand that to mean. What I understand that to mean is that God’s plan, God’s predestined plan from before the foundation of the world was to make us more like Jesus Christ. That sanctification through Jesus Christ has been God’s plan A for those he foreknew from before the foundation of the world.

I don’t know how all of that works together with God’s sovereignty and man’s free will, and probably never will perfectly understand it on this side of eternity. But I believe it has been God’s plan from eternity past to mold us to be more like Jesus Christ. I believe that’s God’s plan for us. And I don’t hear this so much with older people.

Sometimes I do. But more so with younger people, high school, college age. What’s God’s will for my life?

I don’t know if we just get older and tired or if we just get, if we stop asking that or maybe we get better at finding it out for ourselves. But I usually hear it with younger people. What’s God’s will for my life?

God’s will is your sanctification. God’s will is for you to be more like Jesus Christ now how that works specifically in your life I don’t know but that’s God’s will for you the Bible even says that that’s his will even your sanctification but God molds us every day there’s sanctification that takes place at the moment of conversion that says you are mine but there’s also this ongoing sanctification where God teaches us how to act like it to make us more like Jesus Christ and verse 23 says and the very God of peace sanctify you holy. Now if you’re not following along in your Bible, that word holy there is spelled with a W.

It means the whole thing entirely. That God will bring you to a place where your whole life is sanctified. Now I can’t do that on my own and we’ll probably never get there because we are still fallen sinful creatures.

But that’s where we aim for. And that’s where we’re praying for God to bring us as a place of completion and a place of maturity in Jesus Christ. He prayed that God would sanctify them wholly. Indicating that this is an ongoing thing, that God works in their lives every day.

And we know that God works in us every day. We know that God changes us. I mean, if you’ve had those times where you’ve had that breakthrough where you realize, wait a minute, this needs to change.

And you can look back and look back at that pivot point and see where God found you and where God brought you with a particular matter, with a particular attitude or habit or whatever it is, where God has changed you and you’re not the same as you were 10 years ago. You’re not the same as you were five years ago. You’re not the same as you were a year ago because God is working in you.

Folks, that’s the process of sanctification. And I’ve seen people get saved and come into the church, and some of the more established, distinguished church members get mad at them because they wear their hat into the building or because they set a cuss word in the parking lot. We’re all a work in progress.

Folks, and I’m not saying that we just let sin slide and we let people. But sanctification is an ongoing process. And we could easily look at someone who’s behind us in the process, a new Christian, and say, well, why are you still doing this?

Why do you still use that word? Why do you still. .

. But there’s also always going to be somebody ahead of us who looks at us and says, even if we’ve been a Christian for 20, 25 years, and says, why don’t you have this figured out yet? Sanctification is an ongoing process.

And God will make the changes. And God sometimes uses us as believers. Well, not sometimes.

God’s plan, part of God’s plan is to use us to disciple others to help bring them along in that process. But it’s ultimately the work of God. And he will change that in time.

It does not mean, sanctification does not mean that if I kneel down and I pray and I trust Christ as my Savior, that after that moment of conversion I stand up and I’ve got it all figured out and I’ve got everything together. That’s not what that means. Sanctification is an ongoing process.

He prays for the church at Thessalonica. He prays for the people to be sanctified holy, meaning that God will work in them and teach them and train them and mold them and shape them into what they need to be. He prays that that will happen entirely.

He prays to God that their whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless under the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. That this work of God takes place in us. and it’s ongoing and it’s God who will preserve us and change us and mold us into what we need to be until the return of Jesus Christ. In 2 Corinthians it says about this, but even unto this day when Moses is read, the veil is upon their hearts. Nevertheless, when it shall turn to the Lord, the veil shall be taken away.

In other words, when our hearts turn to the Lord, the veil is taken away. We’re able to understand. Now the Lord is that spirit and where the spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.

But we all with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord. And what it’s talking about is once we come to Christ, God takes away that veil that inhibits understanding, and God helps us to grow and understand His Word and His will for us, and God changes us into what we’re supposed to be. I like the way another, that last verse there, verse 18, the way that another translation puts it, We all with unveiled faces are looking as in a mirror at the glory of the Lord and are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory.

We’re being made to look more like the Lord Jesus Christ, and this is from the Lord who is the Spirit. I love that. We’re looking as in a mirror at the glory of the Lord and being transformed into the same image from glory to glory.

God works in us every day because we are His and teaches us how to act like it. And finally this morning, sanctification, not only is it instant and ongoing both, but it is the work of God. And not the result of us behaving better.

It’s not the result of us behaving better. Behaving better is the result of this work. And we’ve got to get these things in the right order.

We’re not saved by behaving better. And we’re not sanctified by behaving better. Salvation comes only through God’s grace, and the result of that is sanctification, and the result of that is behaving better.

So this idea that I’ve got to behave better so God will love me and forgive me, that doesn’t work. That’s a false gospel. And the idea of I’ve got to behave better so I can be more sanctified is getting the cart before the horse.

Because he says in both of these verses, 23 and 24, that it’s God who does it. He said that the very God of peace sanctify you wholly. He didn’t say go out there and be more sanctified.

He says he’s praying for God to sanctify them. And he says in verse 24 that he that calleth you, he’s the one who will do it. That he will do it.

And Paul wrote to the church at Philippi, being confident of this very thing. This is in Philippians chapter 1. Being confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ. even as it is meet for me to think this of you all, because I have you in my heart, and as much as both in my bonds, and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel, ye are all partakers of my grace.

He says, I look at you, and I see the grace of God in you, and I know that what God has started, he’s not going to leave off, he’s not going to neglect, he’s not going to abandon, but that God will bring this process to completion. Folks, in you, if you’re a believer this morning, God started a process a long time ago or maybe a short time ago if you just trusted Christ as your Savior. But at some time back when you trusted Christ when you were born again when you were converted whichever terminology you want to use God began a process in you this process of sanctification.

At that moment he marked you out and said you’re mine. But since then he’s been working in you and trying to change you and mold you from the inside out to be more like Jesus Christ. That is a process that is entirely the work of God. And it’s a process that will continue.

Don’t ever despair and think, well, why am I not a better person yet? Why am I not perfect yet? You’re never going to be.

And those of us who are perfectionists, I hate to break it to you, you are never going to be. There are always going to be those times where you feel like, I am such a sinner. I let God down.

I hate this. I hate me. Folks, sanctification is an ongoing process.

doesn’t mean we wallow in our sin or use that as an excuse but God is working in us to make us more today like Jesus Christ than we were yesterday and more like him tomorrow than we were today and that is his promise that he will do that that’s his will for you is your sanctification and if you’v